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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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A clear and very delightful essay from Wayward Axolotl in 2017 on free speech being a means toward the unalloyed good “social rationality”:

What is freedom of speech?

People often confuse the principle of free speech with a specific law intended to protect free speech, such as the first amendment of the US constitution. Freedom of speech is not a specific law, or set of laws. Freedom of speech is the principle that coercion should not be used to suppress ideas.

What is freedom of speech for?

The primary function of free speech is to enable social rationality. Social rationality means thinking together. Discussion and debate are ways of thinking together. They are ways of solving problems and making decisions together. Freedom of speech creates a space in which people can freely exchange ideas, and thus think together.

Freedom of speech is necessary for social rationality, because otherwise alternatives cannot be presented for consideration. Without freedom of speech, the majority or official opinion is the only one that can be safely expressed. Under those conditions the social belief system is fixed. Errors cannot be corrected, and new ideas cannot be explored. Thought requires the freedom to consider alternatives. It requires an open mind. A society that does not permit free speech has a closed mind. It cannot think. Freedom of speech protects society from becoming trapped in a vicious cycle of conformity.

This got me thinking about Google, which is in a round of layoffs of thousands of employees. I find myself thinking conspiratorially: this would be a great time for them to purge all remaining wrongthinkers from their midst, possibly using their AI to pick those who hold such “hateful” ideas as James Damore.

I have no evidence at all, nor have I heard of such a thing happening. The thought was partly inspired by the military having a similar purge under Obama and now Biden, such that the top generals and admirals are reported (on rightward and far right media alike) to be fully “globohomo” at this point.

Those of you in Silicon Valley or STE(A)M professions, do you know anyone recently laid off from Alphabet, and what their views are?

I don't know what's actually happening, but reasoning about motivations, I'd expect the opposite.

Most people at Google are "woke" but they aren't true believers. In a Muslim society, they'd be religious. In WWII Germany, they'd be Nazis. They just go with the flow and want to advance their own career.

Meanwhile, the 5% (or whatever) of woke true believers make everyone's life miserable. Also, being a litigious bunch, they are hard to fire. Layoffs provide the perfect time to rid oneself of these troublemakers.

On the other hand, there are basically zero outspoken conservative activists at Google. That behavior was already a fireable offense. Any wrongthinkers are either keeping their head down, already gone, or more likely never hired in the first place.

Good points all around; thanks for assuaging my fears.

In a Muslim society, they'd be religious. In WWII Germany, they'd be Nazis. They just go with the flow and want to advance their own career.

I’d say of that sort, in WWII Germany, they'd be “folk”: not hiding Jews, but not looking for them.

I’m going to second this notion, in large part because it seems like the soft skills jobs that always had a bigger portion of true believers were harder hit.